August 2019 National eResearch Newsletter

The Australian Research Data Commons is investing in new platforms (see https://ardc.edu.au/collaborations/strategic-activities/software-and-platforms/platforms/).  From 19 August, you can register your expressions of interest to contribute to solutions that enable researchers to collect, generate, analyse data, and produce outputs that can be made FAIR.  EOIs close on 20-Sep.

ARDC is also seeking feedback on our Software and Platforms strategy (https://ardc.edu.au/news/seeking-your-feedback-on-our-software-and-platforms-strategy/), officially closing on 14-Aug.

The Australian Research Data Commons’ Nectar Research Cloud is being refreshed and version 1 of the request for proposals and information around this process has been released.  See https://ardc.edu.au/collaborations/strategic-activities/storage-and-compute/research-cloud-request-for-proposals/.  Comments on Draft RFP v1 to be received by 19-Aug.

Submit your questions around the request for proposals and attend one of the webinars for more information (scheduled for 12-Sep).  See https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/3525140232265998091.

Note that the submission deadline for Posters and ePosters as well as Solutions Showcases is fast-approaching – Friday, 23-Aug.

Check out requirements and lodge your submission at https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/abstract-submission/.

Now closing on August 30 2019.

Over a 10-week period between Monday, 25 November 2019 and Friday, 14 February 2020, Pawsey will host a group of talented undergraduate students to participate in projects related to high-performance computing (HPC).

We are calling for Australian researchers to submit project proposals for these students to undertake.  Researchers from all domains and from across Australia are encouraged to apply.

Note:  Researchers do not need to be current Pawsey users.  Pawsey will grant modest resource allocation to successful projects.

Read more: https://pawsey.org.au/2019-pawsey-summer-internships-call-for-projects/.

The next Tech Talk is scheduled for 3pm (AEST) Friday, 6-Sep-19. It has been proposed that this would be about NCI and Pawsey.

Check the Meetup site for details as they are released. See https://www.meetup.com/monthlytechtalk/.

The Southern Hemisphere’s biggest hackathon will turn 10 when it runs across Australia and New Zealand over the weekend of 6-8 September 2019.  See https://govhack.org/ for more.

GovHack is about getting our best and brightest people of all ages working with open government data to innovate and create.  It is about encouraging and celebrating the technical and creative capacity, connecting citizens with government for great outcomes, and building on the social and economic value of open data.

Last year there were over 1,500 participants, 240 projects and 26 locations.

Here we look back on a decade of positive hacking:
https://govhack.org/2019/01/govhack-turns-ten-a-look-back/.

Sydney’s Research Bazaar is a low-cost, 4-day intensive festival and conference where researchers come together to up-skill in next generation digital research tools and scholarship.  In the spirit of a marketplace or bazaar, ResBaz is a highly participatory event where researchers from many different disciplines can learn, share knowledge and skills, and have fun.

Register here:  https://resbaz.github.io/resbaz2019/sydney/.

Calls are open for supercomputing time on Magnus at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in 2020.  If you are interested in using supercomputing resources for your meritorious research between January and December in 2020, please consider applying.

• National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (NCMAS) – supports computational research in all science disciplines across Australia. Closes 20-Sep-19
• Energy and Resources Merit Allocation Scheme – supports Energy and Resources-focused research projects from across Australia. Closes 4-Oct-19
• Pawsey Partner Merit Allocation Scheme – supports the whole range of computational research at Pawsey Partner institutions – CSIRO, Curtin, ECU, Murdoch and UWA. Closes 4-Oct-19.

Applications for the 2019-2020 Pawsey Supercomputing Centre Summer Internship program are now open.  We invite students ready to challenge themselves and/or try something new to apply.

The goal of the Pawsey Summer Internship program is to enable undergraduate students to develop skills in computational science by providing the opportunity to be immersed in advanced computing research projects.

We will provide access to high-performance computing, visualization facilities, large-scale data storage and high-speed communications along with expert help to make the best use of technology.

Apply now via the CSIRO Jobs site at https://jobs.csiro.au/job/Perth%2C-WA-2019-Pawsey-Supercomputing-Centre-Summer-Internships/582726700/.  Applications close 20 September 2019.

The Australian BioCommons / EMBL-ABR offers free hands-on bioinformatics workshops around Australia.  Registrations are now open for ‘Implementing Scalable Bioinformatic Workflows in Snakemake & Nextflow’ on 25 and 26-Sep:  https://www.embl-abr.org.au/about/events/.

The webinar series presented in conjunction with ARDC will soon present talks by leaders in their fields including Dr Denis Bauer, Group leader, Transformational Bioinformatics, CSIRO, Dr Kim-Anh Lê Cao, NHMRC Career Development Fellow, Melbourne Integrative Genomics & School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne and Professor Dave Burt, Director, UQ Genomics, and Chair, GAiA Steering Committee.

Register here:  https://www.embl-abr.org.au/webinars/.

A repository has been established for Australian and New Zealand HPC Educators on Github, covering course content at every level of competency as well as techniques for educators, grounded in modern andragogical theory.

The repository featured in a major announcement at the ARDC skills summit, and will also be a topic of discussion at the HPC-AI Advisory Council in Perth.

All HPC educators in the AU-NZ region are invited to join.

See https://github.com/australia-new-zealand-hpc-educators.

The Australian Research Data Commons’ Infrastructure and Data Summits are on Monday 21 October (alongside the eResearch-Australasia Conference Workshops).  See https://ardc.edu.au/news/the-australian-research-data-commons-infrastructure-and-data-summits/

Add the infrastructure (https://ardc.edu.au/events/storage-and-compute-infrastructure-summit/) and data (https://ardc.edu.au/events/data-and-services-summit/) events to your calendar and register (via the eRA-Conf website at https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/2019-registration/).

The workshops at eResearch Australasia are always popular and this year will be no exception.  Scheduled for Monday 21st and Friday 25th October in Brisbane, visit https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/2019-program/ to see the great line-up including workshops on Authentication and Authorisation, RSE, AUDIN, Careers and Learning, Grey research data, MyTardis, DevOps, AWS, Juypter Notebooks and XNAT.

Workshops are a popular addition for conference attendees for professional development and networking.  With limited spaces available, we recommend registering ASAP to secure your spot and avoid disappointment.

Australia’s fastest supercomputer will soon be up to 10-times more powerful, with NCI announcing its new high-performance machine, Gadi.  Going live in November, Gadi is named after the words “to search for” in the language of the Ngunnawal people – the traditional owners of the Canberra region.

For more information about Gadi, click here: https://opus.nci.org.au/display/Help/Gadi%3A+NCI%27s+New+Supercomputer.

Researchers from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales have studied the East-Coast Low, a regular weather phenomenon with hugely destructive potential, using high-resolution weather models running at NCI.

Armed with their high-resolution model replication of the 2016 East-Coast storm, the researchers worked with NCI’s scientific visualisation team to turn the data from it into a beautiful and scientifically robust video.

Click here to watch the video: https://youtu.be/PASLBy55YJ4.

The National Waterbug Blitz is a citizen science project led by Federation University Australia’s Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation, in partnership with Waterwatch, Corangamite Catchment Management Authority, EnviroComm Connections and The Waterbug Company.  The partners recently launched the Waterbug Data Portal which provides public access to federated data from across Australia, including both state government waterbug monitoring and community monitoring such as Waterwatch.

The project is part of the Inspiring Australia – Science Engagement Program.  A data collection event will occur this spring with citizen scientists encouraged to investigate the health of their waterways and wetlands.

See www.waterbugblitz.org.au and www.waterbugblitz.org.au/Resources.

Presentations from our great line-up of international and domestic speakers at the 10th Annual AeRO Forum “eResearch Challenges, Blockers and Planning for Success” are now available at http://aero.edu.au/forum2019/.

Each year the Forum provides the unique opportunity for CEOs, senior staff and emerging eResearch leaders, from across the eResearch and Higher Education sectors, to discuss key issues.  In addition to our international and domestic guest speakers, one of the highlights of the event is the networking opportunity provided by this event.

Email loretta@aero.edu.au to receive information about the 2020 Forum.

AeRO provides details of the latest eResearch job opportunities in the sector.  Jobs are posted immediately to https://twitter.com/AeRO_eResearch, and the website at http://aero.edu.au/jobs/ is also updated.

This is a free service for the whole eResearch community – to advertise a position, simply email loretta@aero.edu.au.

Here’s a sample of current vacancies:  Technical Support Engineer, Data Architect, Data Informatics Specialist, Research Data Librarian, Chief Digital Officer, Senior Software Engineer, HPC DevOps Engineers, Academic Data Analyst, Virtual Laboratories System Manager, Communications Networks Research Engineer, Multiple eResearch Analyst Positions.